Most people think that psychopaths are only in the movies or that they are in prison for serial killing sprees. This is not true. Psychopaths are around you and you have interacted with them.

No, this does not mean you are in danger or that they will be physically violent if they do target you for “special attention” as a particular favorite victim. It does not mean they will target you at all.

What is does mean is that 3 out of 100 people you ineract with is a psychopath. They can appear charming, they may take great care to look attractive and they often hold positions of respect within the community.

Psychopaths are teaching, giving therapy sessions, leading churches, contributing to charities and giving you medical treatment. They make up 3 to 4 percent of the population and you have exchanged words with one of them.

Being in the presense, even daily, with a psychopath does not meam they will ever harm you. They may just be using you to help maintain or promote their image, which is their “false self.”

Psychopaths will only specifically target certain people, usually ones that are predisposed to abuse. Other people are used as tools, proxies and pawn pieces in their games.

Narcissists , sociopaths and psychopaths are one and the same but they are on a spectrum. You can look up Nine Traits of Narcissism on google or YouTube.

The term sociopath is not any different than a psychpath. There was once a desire to make a strong distnction between narcissists and psychopaths and to create a label of in-between the two ends of the spectrum.

Make no mistake, someone with 9 traits narcissism is potentially dangerous and someone with 7 or 8 traits ( a sociopath) is also very dangerous. They may not choose to be physically violent but they are a danger the mental health, and ability to thrive of their victims.

If you are working with one then you may find yourself harrassed, bullied and feel your job is in jeapordy due to them. It probably is.

If your landlord is one then you may feel the same level of harrassment, threats, and manipulation from them as the one at work.

If they are in your life and you are not providing them with narcissistic supply, making them look good, feeding their ego and listening in awe of their stories of grandeur, then you might be tormented by them. They may torment and bully you to get things to go the way they want or just for sadistic pleasure…it depends where they fall on the narcissim/ psychopath spectrum.

None of the people who have malignant narcissistic personality disorder have any feelings of compassion, emapthy, love or remore. Although they can emulate the words and gestures of people that do have these feelings.

Narcissists will woo you in order to lure you into trusting them. They can appear normal, even charming, for short periods of time. It takes extended interaction with them in order to see their mask slip.

If something seems inconsistent or “off” about someone and you find yourself recounting conversations to try to make sense of what seemed to be perfectly rational but later did not fit, then be wary.

Narcissists use “word salad”, re-framing, pre-supposition and other neuro linguistic programming (NLP) techniques to manipulate and confuse you. You can look these techniques up on google to learn more about them.

Some people spend years learning NLP techniques in order to use them for good purposes like helping clients lose weight or overcome a phobia.

Narcissists naturally use these techniques …but with insidious intentions. If you feel like you are being dominated in every conversation, even when you are in the right, just be wary.

If you feel like someone is always dominant in conversations about topics you are more trained and skilled in, that is anothercred flag.

If someone knows better about every single topic you have ever discussed with them, that is a red flag. Who knows better than you about everthing? Probably only someone with such a huge ego that they pretend to know things they don’t, just to put you under their foot.

Someone who is a “pathological lier” is probably a narcissist. They can lie right to your face with eye contact, and sound very sincere or even offended and indignant.

If you feel your will power being sucked out of you and your identity and self worth leaving the room, every time they are in it, that is not normal.

Normal people do not have that effect on others. They do not feel the need to push others down in order to appear bigger and better.

You have interacted with these people without knowing it and you never knew why you felt bad everytime you were around them…or you wondered what it was about you that made “dominating manipulative people” seem to intimidate you.

Intimidation is a game to them and it is also a way of survival for them. They do not want you close enough to see through their games so they will keep you at a distance.

As long as you are struggling to deal with their games, you are too focused on what is happening to you to really look at them and see who they are. They are deceiptful, bullying, “all knowing” people who always have a hidden agenda.

Their behaviors are often confusing because you are unaware of their agenda, which always has to do with them.

Even when they seem to be doing benevolent acts of service their is a hidden agenda behind it.

You might want to consider doing some research on narcissism and psychopathy, just to protect yourself. In this case knowledge is empowerment. These people want to disempower you by starting with your self confidence and distorting your perception of reality.

Some study of neuro linguistic programming will also help you to protect yourself from tactics being used against you that you have never heard of. There are some great videos on NLP hypnosis by David Snyder on YouTube.

You can research NLP techniques of “re-framing”, “presupposition”, “word salad” and others.

You can look up “gaslighting” and you will find written information and videos. I am going to post some videos about gaslighting in the next few weeks and I will put the links for you here.

There is no reason to have parts of your life miserable because of not knowing the tactics of narcissists or how to identify them. You can also look up “red flags” of a narcissist or “red flags” of an abuser and you will get some information.

Trust you gut and do not trust people that make you question your own perception. If something seems off…it probably is.

You can’t Wake a Person up Who is Pretending to be Asleep.

This is an ancient Native American Proverb. It can be applicable in various contexts. I want ti discuss this statement in the context of toxic personalities that we deal with.

If you are in any kind of relationship with someone who you feel is toxic to you, then they are probably using communication skills that are inauthentic. They are dishonest in the way they interact with you, and probably with others as well.

We are used to expecting people to communicate what it is that they want, whether we agree with them or not. Most people will demand, ask for, explain or otherwise communicate their desires to you.

When you are dealing with a toxic personality, they will not be up front about what it is that they are after. Their communication often leaves you feeling confused about what their purpose was in saying things.

They sometimes seem to say things that are the opposite of what you would expect them to say. They do things that seem contrary to their own purposes.

You find yourself questioning why their behaviors seem contradictory to their goals. The reason for this is simple….you do not know what their purposes are.

In thinking of these people as people who think like you do….you will never see what they are up to. Their purpose may be far more insidious and intentionally destructive…simply for the sake of the destruction of other people.

They will shift blame upon you, when they are at fault in situations. They will accuse you of having the bad characteristics that they have. They will lie and then accuse you of lying. They will cause a situation of chaos and then blame you for having caused it.

No matter what happens, there is wreckage and carnage in the wake of their path. People are in states of anxiety when this person is around and they will cause people to turn against each other.

The toxic personality loves to triangulate people. This means that they will intentionally place people in situations which cause confrontation and ill will. They enjoy the emotional torment of other people.

They will never take responsibility for causing any problems, even though they know that they created them intentionally.

Toxic people lie and you can never tell what parts of what they say are the truth. They are intentionally causing you and others mental and emotional torment. But they will claim that you are not trying hard enough to get along with them, or the other people.

You can try to explain to the toxic person that they are setting up situations which are uncomfortable for you. You can try to explain to them why the things they want are not appropriate. They are often very inappropriate in social situations.

story number one…

I was with a narcissistic personality who once intentionally hired back an ex employee, just because the other workers in the office hated working with her. At this point in our relationship, I did not realize that he was doing these things intentionally. He would ask my advice about social etiquette …saying that he did not understand people.

He asked me my advice about hiring this ex employee back. He explained to me that she always seemed to cause trouble in the office with the other workers. One of his sales women in particular, really hated this girl.

He knew this and still he was asking me if he should hire her back. I thought he was confused and needed to talk it out. I asked him if he knew what the situation was between the ex employee and his current sales woman. He said they his sales person had told him flat out that she would never work next to this woman.

She interfered with her work and was overbearing in the office. She was rude and crude and otherwise unprofessional. I asked him why he would want to hire someone like this again. He just said that she was good at sales and that he needed another sales person.

I told him that if he hired her , the same problems would occur again. It would be an insult to his sales woman, who had been loyal to him for many years. It would be very disrespectful to her, to rehire this person and force her to work next to her.

He was planning to open another office, in a different location. he said maybe he would put one of them in the new office and one of them in the old office. I told him that he could try this, as long as they had no interaction with each other. There was no reason to create a hostile work environment for his sales team, especially when there other people he could hire.

So, the next day he hired her back, He put her in the desk right next to the sales woman who hated her. She was dominating and rude and made everyone’s life miserable. All of the sales people were upset and this clearly affected their work.

As much as he wanted sales, he was willing to risk the quality of the sales calls, just to torment his employees, especially the loyal sales woman who had begged him not to rehire the ex employee.

Night after night, he relayed to me stories about how everyone was arguing and upset. He did not seem to mind. He almost seemed amused, but I was not ready to see that he really was.

It is a power trip. The toxic people love to create chaos and torment people. It is deliberate. They will do this even to their own detriment.

The reason that you cannot teach them or explain to them that the things they are doing are wrong…..is because they already know.

No matter how I tried to explain to him and warn him, when he would plan to do things like this (which was very often) he did not seem to understand. he would tell me “I just don’t understand people” He said that people always ended up i chaos around him, and he was the innocent victim.

He claimed to have no idea why his employees and friend were always unhappy with him. He did not understand why people felt taken advantage of by him. He did not understand why people eventually refused to take his calls.

He would tell me these stories about how people “abused him” in his past and in his present situations. He shifted the blame of all situations onto someone else.

He used to ask my advice about dealing with people. I thought he was asking in order to know what the right thing was to do. Well, he was in a way….he wanted to know what the right thing was….in order that he could do the opposite.

Anytime I explained to him how people were going to feel if he did certain things, he would always do the thing that I told him was the worst thing to do. The most disrespectful, degrading, humiliating thing. He would take advantage of people all the time and say that he did not take advantage of them.

He claimed that other people always took advantage of him. He claimed to be completely oblivious to the fact that he caused volatile situations, by doing inappropriate things. Any time he asked my advice, he did the opposite.

story number two…

He once used the mother of one of his female friends, in order to do work for him. His friend already had a shaky relationship with her mother. She had been trying to spend time with the other to work on the relationship.

In the mean time, this friend had been working for him and he had been paying her. Upon realizing that he could get the old woman to do the same work that the daughter was doing….and not pay her….he used her to do the work. He no longer had the daughter do work for him.

On top of this, he dominated all of the mother’s time and made sure that she was not available any time that the daughter wanted to speak with her. He blew off the friendship, he took the mother away from the daughter and he got work done for free.

And…..he complained ! He complained about the quality of the work that the old woman did! he complained that the daughter was sending him emails, asking him to at least pay her mother for the hours she was working.

He complained that his “friend” was out to get all of his money and all that anyone cared about was money.

This is a narcissist. This is a toxic personality.

The reason that I could not “wake him up” was that he was not sleeping. He was pretending to be sleeping. He was pretending to not understand what he was doing wrong.

I told him that he was causing damage to the relationships. He knew. He did not care.

You cannot wake up someone who is “pretending to sleep”

Keep these things in mind as you are dealing with people. Just because they seem to be asleep or they tell you they are asleep….does not mean that it is the truth.